The kitchen quieted immediately after that.
Ryan sat up straighter. “Damn.”
“Yeah.”
“How’d she find out?” Michael asked.
Blaze’s jaw tightened instantly. “The department called during our lunch date.”
Michael closed his eyes briefly like he physically felt the damage from there. “Oh, that’s bad.”
“It gets worse,” Ryan muttered. “Because I know this idiot didn’t tell her about the interview.”
Blaze shot him a hard look. “I wasn’t hiding it.”
Michael gave him a long stare over the rim of his coffee cup. “That sentence literally never helps any situation involving women.”
Ryan snorted into his drink. “Especially women you emotionally devastated once already.”
Blaze leaned back heavily in the chair, regret grinding through him hard enough to tighten every muscle in his chest.
“I didn’t think it mattered anymore,” he admitted. “I interviewed months ago before we started talking again.”
Ryan tossed another chip into his mouth. “Clearly she thinks it matters now.”
That irritated him because it was true.
Blaze stared down at the scratched wooden table for several long seconds while Johanna’s face replayed in his head all over again. The hurt in her eyes. The way she stepped away from his touch outside the hotel. The quietness in her voice when she said she finally let herself believe loving him was safe again.
Fuck! That part was still sitting in his chest like a blade.
“She looked at me like I already left,” he admitted quietly.
The confession came rougher than he intended.
Because that was the part haunting him now, not the argument itself or even the possibility of Seattle. He'd spent weeks convincing her she was safe with him. One phone call had undone all of it.
Michael sighed slowly. “Women remember emotional patterns, man.”
Blaze looked up immediately.
“You spent years being the restless dude always chasing the next move, whether it was bigger departments, more training, or different cities.” Michael shrugged lightly. “You can’t act shocked that she panicked hearing the word, ‘Seattle.’”
The truth hit hard because Blaze understood it better now than he ever had before.
Back then, he’d spent so much time chasing the next opportunity that he never realized what it felt like standing on the other side of his ambition. Johanna had loved him while quietly waiting for the day he decided she wasn’t enough to keep him still.
And maybe the worst part was realizing that at twenty-three, Johanna hadn’t been wrong to fear it.
Blaze scrubbed one hand down his face again while regret simmered low in his chest. “I don’t even know how to fix this.”
Ryan pointed toward him immediately. “Well, first, don’t say no stupid male nonsense like ‘you’re overreacting.’”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” Michael asked skeptically, then pushed away from the counter and walked closer. “The issue ain’t Seattle.”
Blaze frowned slightly. “Then what is it?”
